60 Minutes: Torture enemy detainees (Bush Administration) or kill them with Predator Drones (Obama Administration)?

Public domain: Abu Ghraib.

I came close to physical illness Sunday evening from watching Lesley Stahl’s interview of former CIA spy Jose Rodriguez on 60 Minutes. Rodriguez strenuously attempted to justify torture of enemy detainees. The details of the techniques practiced during the Bush Administration to extract information from suspected terrorists were the stuff of the worst nightmares. But as Kevin Gosztola points out in his post at FireDogLake, the interview reminded viewers that instead of capturing and torturing the suspects, the Obama Administration, simply kills them (along with any unfortunate innocents who get in the way) with Predator Drone attacks.

Gosztola writes:

Former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Counterterrorism Center and its former Deputy Director of Operations Jose Rodriguez appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” to flaunt his new book Hard Measures, which details how he came to be in charge of CIA torture against terror suspects at “black site” prisons, why he believes torture was effective and why it should not be vilified.

The segment with Lesley Stahl has the same title as Rodriguez’s book. The title sounds like the name of a film starring an action movie star like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal, which makes it appropriate because each answer from Rodriguez is dripping with bravado. From Rodriguez’s first answer to the last, one cannot help but realize he believes it is somehow unmanly to be concerned that torture of terror suspects violates the rule of law. He appears in his sleek white Camaro rolling down the highway to the CIA. And he says at one point, “We needed to get everyone in government to put their big boy pants on and give us the authorities we needed.”

Of course, like most establishment media interviews, the torture is not called torture. It is called “harsh techniques.” Or the official term Cheney coined for it—“enhanced interrogation techniques.”

*Here are both parts of the interview: Part 1 / Part 2

 

The first words in the segment are, “After the attacks of 9/11…” That phrase is all one needs to hear to know that this is going to be a tireless exercise in explaining away acts that historically have been considered war crimes when carried out.

Read more:

Julian Assange’s God complex and his problems with women, including Hillary Clinton

Steve Kroft’s interview of Julian Assange on 60 Minutes this Sunday was unnerving. Assange is a smooth talking, slick looking character radiating a discomfiting aura. He had self-serving answers to all of Kroft’s questions and didn’t hesitate to position himself as a superior being with the divine right to manipulate world leaders and diplomats as he sees fit. He gets to judge them, too.

And he singled out Hillary Clinton for his most intense expression of contempt. Considering that he’s been accused of rape by two women in Sweden, one detects a strong tendency toward misogyny.

More frightening than any other aspect of the interview, though, was Assange’s apparently unquestioned belief that he knows what’s best for all people – kind of a God complex, wouldn’t you say?

In the meantime, the man determined to expose the secrets of others, whether endangering innocent lives or not, is himself surrounded by secrecy.

Watch the interview on 60 Minutes: